Steve Jobs recently proclaimed a new commitment to greener product design, but a Taiwan-based company called Asus has topped Apple’s new Air laptop in the sustainble sweepstakes with its Eco Book. Yeah, it’s cool that the Air is clad in recyclable aluminum, but the Eco Book’s laminated with strips of sustainably harvested bamboo, according to the Guardian.

Asus designed the Eco Book in response to the growing demand for alternatives to plastics. Jellent Sun, a senior director at Asus, told the Guardian “Bamboo is the most sustainable raw material there is.” The Eco Book was unveiled yesterday at the computer fair CeBIT, in Hanover, Germany, but it won’t go into production till June.

Other companies are introducing their own “ecolutions” at CeBIT, such as Fujitsu Siemens’ O-Watt monitor, which uses no electricity when in standby mode. This is exactly the kind of innovation we need to solve the “vampire energy“ problem I blogged about yesterday.

With everyone looking to give their products a green veneer””literally, in the case of the Eco Book–Greenpeace has Olmer Einaiem, its International media relations specialist, checking the green credentials of the products at CeBIT. Einaimen told the Guardian, “We’re here to cut through the corporate greenspeak and find out how much is real, and how much is just PR.”

Today at CeBIT, Greenpeace will be presenting “the most environmentally friendly IT products on the market. Stay sustainably tuned!

Learn more about the problems of e-waste and what you can do about it at etoxics.org.